Fast moving shocker at Warwick Arts Centre

A NOTE at the start of the text of Simon Stephens’s shocker reads: ‘This play can be performed by any number of actors. It can be performed in any order’.

The randomness of lives brought together in a moment of violence is what it is about. In this production, a cast of ten deliver a patchwork of stories, glimpsed in the run up to the 7/7 bombings in London in 2005.

The lives glimpsed are far from functional. A brother and sister form an incestuous romance that is doomed from the start; a woman sabotages her boss’s project; a young white supremacist develops an infatuation with his teacher; a student is seduced by her lecturer; a misanthropic old woman seeks in vain for attention. Each weaves a thread through the play, like a squiggly line on a map describing a journey.

The journeys that count, of course, are those of the bombers. They occupy no more space on stage than do the other characters. No rantings, no tabloid fanaticism. They too have stories. They could be you or me.

The title refers to the quality of relationships in a society where everything is a commodity. Desire is rampant, fulfilment never achieved. Each is deluded, the bombers driven by the same need for a more meaningful emotional life as their victims. Whether this really excuses or justifies such actions is a question left unanswered.

Warwick University Drama Society put on an ensemble performance that is fast moving, beautifully choreographed, and which makes good use of video technology.

Nick Le Mesurier